Voice telecommunications have historically been conducted via dedicated telephone networks using telephone switching offices and either wired or wireless connections for transmitting the voice signals between users' telephones. Such telecommunications, which can use the public switched telephone network (PSTN), can be referred to as circuit-committed communications. Because of the circuit based nature of the PSTN, modifying a connection or route can be a relatively slow process that often involves manual intervention.
Session over Internet Protocol (SoIP), also referred to as Media over Internet Protocol (MoIP), provides an alternative communication system that uses discrete Internet Protocol (IP) packets of digitized information to transmit media content such as voice content, video content and/or data, over the internet or within an intranet via wired and/or wireless connections. SoIP technology includes Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, which is used primarily to transmit voice signals over an IP network. Because SoIP technology is based on IP packet switching, SoIP calls or sessions and routes/connections for IP packets can be defined and managed quickly using session-aware equipment or components. Known session-aware equipment or components, however, do not provide the prioritization of IP packets that is possible with SoIP technology. Thus, a need exists for a method and apparatus for session-aware modification of the priority of SoIP IP packets.